The Jonang Sect, which promotes Other-Emptiness, is the only school that teaches true Buddhism. The other sects, Nyingma, Kagyu, Gelug and Sakya are non-Buddhist schools which disguise themselves as Buddhist.

The Lama system is a complecated system of sex abuse, abuse of meditation and finally abuse of the whole univers. By Severitas

2012-04-04

SOUL BETRAYAL

In the early 1980s, Jeanne Miller was
a typical suburban mom. She did community work, served as PTA president, and
helped produce plays in her school district just outside Chicago. She was also
a devout Catholic. "My mother died when I was 14, and I went to boarding
school," she recalls. "For a critical time in my life, the Church --
the nuns -- raised me and was my family."

This sense of
family began to disintegrate in 1982 when another mother confided that one of
the parish priests had, during a swim at a nearby lake, tried to strip off her
son's bathing trunks when he was in the water. Thinking the accusation
unbelievable, Miller initially proceeded, she admits, "to disprove what
this woman had said." But instead of being reassured when she called the
head of religious education at the parish, she was told that the church had a
file of complaints against the priest. When she contacted the archdiocese, she
was rebuffed by a chancery official, who told her that her motherly instincts
were working overtime. She could not prove her allegations, he said; nothing
was going to be done.

I can't even
describe how devastated, angry, and hurt [I felt]," says Miller, who
ultimately discovered that the priest had provided alcohol and marijuana to the
13- and 14-year-olds he took with him to a lake house each Tuesday on his day
off, let them drive a boat and his car, lied to parents -- and tried to fondle
her own 14-year-old son. Miller contacted police and filed a lawsuit, mainly to
force the church to deal with the priest's behavior.

"We didn't
want him removed. We just said, `Do something, find out what is wrong here,
provide some counseling. Care about us.'" Instead, the church's law firm
began fighting the lawsuit. Miller's legal bills grew steadily until she could
no longer afford to continue the battle. She agreed to a small financial
settlement -- $15,000 -- which didn't begin to cover the $35,000 legal bill.

"We were a
Yankee Doodle Dandy family," Miller says. "We believed if you were
good and gave to others, others would give back to you. We never expected the
Church to come down on us like that."

Miller is not
alone in the shock, betrayal, anger, and grief she experienced. One of the
first to bring a lawsuit against the Catholic Church and a leading figure in
the abuse-survivor self-help movement, Miller has helped bring awareness to the
issue of abuse by spiritual authorities. The problem, however, is vast. For
example:

• In July 1994, two lawsuits were filed
against Swami Rama, the spiritual leader of the Himalayan International
Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The civil
suits followed decades of reports of sexual improprieties, including a 1990
magazine article that detailed instances of sexual misconduct and several
individuals' efforts to alert Himalayan officials to the abuses.

• In October 1994, Yogi Amrit Desai,
spiritual director and founder of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in
Lenox, Massachusetts, resigned after admitting to inappropriate sexual contact
with three women. At the time, he told senior Kripalu officials that there had
been no other instances of sexual misdeeds. Eight months later, two more women
came forward, and the then 62-year-old spiritual teacher admitted that he had
had sexual contact with them and one other woman.

• In July 1995, Harry Budd Miles, a
65-year-old retired Methodist minister, was sentenced to five months in jail
after pleading guilty to charges of child abuse and perverted practice
involving a Boy Scout in the 1970s. According to court documents, the Maryland
minister had engaged the boy in kissing, fellatio, and masturbation in his
church office, the basement of his home, and his summer house over a five-year
period.

• In December 1995, what is thought to be
the first lawsuit against a Buddhist teacher was settled through a mediation
process. The civil suit, filed initially in November 1994, against best-selling
author and Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche alleged that over a period of 19 years
he had induced female students "to have sexual intercourse with him . . .
by preying upon their vulnerability and belief that they could only achieve
enlightenment by serving the sexual and other needs of Sogyal, their
enlightened master." In addition to intentional infliction of emotional
distress and breach of fiduciary duty, the complaint included a count of
assault and battery.

• In April 1996, 59-year-old Episcopal
Bishop Edward C. Chalfant began a one-year disciplinary leave of absence after
admitting to an extramarital affair with an unmarried woman. According to
diocesan spokesperson Mary Lou Lavallee, following that announcement additional
people came forward. Based on information provided by them and upon further
consideration, the diocese's standing committee and the national church's
Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning recommended that Chalfant resign, which he
did in May, ending his 10-year tenure as Bishop of Maine.

Beginning in the
mid-1980s, a rash of news articles detailing accusations and lawsuits against
Catholic priests for molesting youngsters -- generally teenage boys --
unleashed a flood of revelations concerning sexual misconduct not only by
Catholic priests but by spiritual authorities in virtually every religion.
Regularly since then, reports of years-old as well as current sexual
improprieties have surfaced, forcing religious organizations and churches to
create codes of ethics, procedures for handling allegations, guidelines to deal
with victims, and educational programs for clergy and spiritual teachers.

Hardly a month
goes by without news of a priest, rabbi, minister, roshi, or swami being
disciplined for, resigning because of, or charged with sexual misdeeds. Still,
data that could precisely measure the prevalence of sexual abuse by spiritual
authorities is difficult to come by. What research exists focuses solely on
Christian denominations and is either years old or statistically
"soft." For example, a nine-year-old survey of evangelical ministers
conducted by the research department of Christianity Today magazine and
published in the 1988 Leadership Journal found that 12 percent of clergy
surveyed admitted to having sexual intercourse with someone other than a spouse;
23 percent stated that they had been "sexually inappropriate" with
someone other than their spouse. A 1991 national survey of mainly Protestant
pastors by a group at the Center for Ethics and Social Policy, Graduate
Theological Union, in Berkeley, California -- described by its researchers as
"small and not scientifically controlled" -- uncovered similar
findings: About 10 percent of those surveyed had been sexually involved with a
parishioner. Another study published in the winter 1993 Journal of Pastoral
Care found that only 6.1 percent of Southern Baptist pastor respondents
admitted to having sexual contact with a person either currently or formerly
affiliated with their church. In that same survey, however, 70 percent of
respondents said they knew of pastors who had had sexual contact with a
congregant.

A.W. Richard
Sipe, a former Roman Catholic priest and current Baltimore, Maryland,
psychotherapist, suggests that nearly 50 percent of Catholic priests break
their vow of celibacy by engaging in some form of sexual activity. In his 1995
book, Sex, Priests, and Power, he estimates that 6 percent of priests have
sexual contact with youngsters -- 2 percent with children under 10 years and 4
percent with adolescents. But, he writes, "sexual abuse of minors is only
part of the problem. Four times as many priests involve themselves sexually
with adult women, and twice the number of priests involve themselves with adult
men."

Looking at the
situation from another angle, the United Methodist Church sponsored a 1990
study that examined sexual harassment -- unwanted behavior ranging from
suggestive looks and unsolicited touching to attempted or actual assault and
rape -- within its ranks. Of the clergywomen surveyed, 41.8 percent reported
unwanted sexual behavior by a colleague or pastor; 17 percent of laywomen said
that their own pastors had harassed them.

Nevertheless,
many researchers and professionals in the field are wary of citing statistics.
According to Roman Paur, executive director of the Interfaith Sexual Trauma
Institute in Collegeville, Minnesota, statistics regarding clergy sexual
misconduct are "fundamentally guesses" because there is no hard
research to back up the numbers. Father Stephen J. Rossetti, vice president and
chief operating officer of St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland, for
example, says that while he respects his colleague's work, he is not confident
of the source of Sipe's figures. Yet interviews with clergy, victims, and other
professionals offer clinical and anecdotal evidence that challenge several
popular perceptions related to clergy sexual misconduct:

• That most sex-abuse cases involving
priests are pedophilic. In fact, only about one-third of priests who sexually
abuse children are pedophiles (that is, they molest a prepubescent child). The
rest sexually abuse adolescents, generally boys. The precise clinical term for
their behavior is ephebophilia. Although few would dispute the fact that sexual
violations against youngsters of any age are detestable, the distinction has
important clinical implications related to prognosis and treatment. The term
"pedophile priest" is an unfortunately memorable but often inaccurate
appellation.

• That Catholic priests become sexually
involved with adolescent boys, whereas all other religious authorities become
involved with adult women. Stephen Rossetti says he's seen enough cases of
Protestant clergy abusing minors and Catholic clergy abusing women to believe
that it happens both ways. He uses the generally accepted estimate of 2 to 7
percent when speaking of Catholic priests who molest minors, and he points out
that this is the same percentage as in the general population. That fact
carries no comfort for survivors such as David Clohessy, a St. Louis political
and public-relations consultant and national director of the Survivors Network
of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP). "It doesn't matter whether just as many
priests [abuse] as plumbers do," he says. "You can't take solace in
that." • That clergy misconduct involves only heterosexual men abusing
women and children. According to social worker Melissa Steinmetz of the Holy
Cross Counseling Group in South Bend, Indiana, sex abuse is not a males-only
transgression. Because the feminist movement was largely responsible for
awareness of sexual abuse, the original focus was solely on male perpetrators.
But, says Steinmetz, experience has shown that some women, too, are guilty of
abuse, especially of preadolescent and adolescent boys. "Probably there
will always be more male sex offenders," says Steinmetz, but she notes
that keeping the focus exclusively on male perpetrators does a disservice to
the adolescent male victims of female offenders.

Pat Liberty, an
American Baptist minister, also reports that she is beginning to see some
grassroots organizations springing up for survivors of abuse by women religious
and to hear about complaints against lesbian clergy. But regarding the latter,
she says, "Gay and lesbian folk are not going to come forward to tell
their story. They know that they are not going to get a fair hearing, because
the Church will get lost in the gay and lesbian stuff rather than dealing with
the power abuses and the other things that are at stake."

Despite the lack
of reliable figures and the misconceptions, most professionals agree that the
problem is far-reaching not only in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish
congregations but in Buddhist sanghas and Hindu ashrams as well. Abuse by
spiritual leaders is nondenominational, and the dynamics between clergy and
parishioners, between gurus and devotees, between spiritual teachers and
students, bear striking resemblances to one another. From profiles of the
perpetrators and victims to the impact on the spiritual communities and their
ways of dealing with the situation, clergy sexual malfeasance is an ecumenical
reality, one that has probably been with us as long as civilization and one
that is not about to go away.

Through time
immemorial, human beings have sought protection, salvation, and solace from
deities -- from Shiva and Shakti, from Jesus and Jehovah, from Aphrodite and
Zeus. For nearly as long as we have been petitioning and praising the gods, we
have identified in our tribal ranks those who seem particularly attuned to or
knowledgeable about guiding us in our search.

Anson Shupe, a
sociology professor at Indiana University/Purdue University, reasons in his
book In the Name of All That's Holy that if the priesthood emerged as a
profession during the transition from a hunting-and-gathering to an
agricultural society, then the ancestor of the priest is the shaman. Because
Shupe believes that the shamanic craft is not without a certain amount of
manipulation and sleight-of-hand, he theorizes that "clergy malfeasance,
or something we moderns could recognize as such, is probably as old as
practiced religion itself."

What is new,
however, is the media coverage of abuse by spiritual authorities. In the
not-too-distant past, a kind of embargo existed against publicizing what might
at the time have been considered the "sexual shenanigans" of those in
positions of leadership. Some offices carried such respect and weight that the
persons occupying them were granted immunity from the scrutiny of their private
lives. Sex scandals were seen as reflecting poorly on hallowed institutions --
the presidency in the case of John F. Kennedy's affairs, or the Catholic Church
in the case of priests who might have been caught in flagrante delicto.
Incidents were winked away or dealt with quietly.

Recalls Philip
Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University
and author of Pedophiles and Priests: "I had a police friend in New York
who would -- pardon the expression -- talk about all the times he had `cut
loose a faggot brother,' by which he meant he had arrested a priest or brother
for a homosexual act and had let him go with a warning." For decades, it
was impossible to write about church scandals due to publishers' fears of
losing advertising dollars or of being boycotted. "Think what that must
have done to people in the priesthood and in the seminaries," says
Jenkins. "For a tiny minority who did have tendencies to any kind of
sexual misconduct, it must have given them a sense of invulnerability."

That shield of
immunity was shattered in the mid-1980s with the Gilbert Gauthe case. Gauthe
was the pastor of St. John's Parish in Henry, Louisiana. According to
journalist Jason Berry, who broke the story in a local weekly newspaper and who
detailed Catholic priests' abuse of children in articles and a book, Lead Us
Not into Temptation, church officials were aware of Gauthe's sexual
propensities as early as 1974. Almost 10 years passed, however, before he was
finally relieved of his priestly duties. Soon thereafter, in October 1984,
Gauthe was indicted on charges relating to sexual abuse of minors and child
pornography; a year later, the judge in his case agreed to a plea bargain.
Gauthe pleaded guilty to 33 charges and was sentenced to 20 years without
parole. He also lost a subsequent civil suit, which awarded $1.25 million to a
boy who claimed to have been molested and the boy'sparents.

Since that time,
gallons of printer's ink have splashed details of cases across the pages of
newspapers and magazines. According to Marie Fortune, founder and executive
director of the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in
Seattle, Washington, the prevalence of sexual misdeeds by those in spiritual
authority is due to the fact that most organized religious groups -- both
traditional and nontraditional -- are "fundamentally patriarchal in their
history and contemporary in expression and practice." In her new book,
Love Does No Harm, the United Church of Christ minister says that this
paradigm, which is sometimes seen as "normative, even ordained by
God," supports and reinforces a dominance/submission model -- with men
dominant and women submissive. This power imbalance is then combined with a
cultural assumption of male sexual access to women and children. The result:
sexual abuse in epidemic proportions.

Shupe offers a different
explanation of the problem: "The sociological reality is that all
religions are hierarchies of social status and power." This power, he
says, is undergirded by the "loyalty and respect of rank-and-file
believers who are taught or encouraged to expect that their leaders possess in
large measure some special discernment or spiritual insight and have
benevolent, ethical treatment of believers always uppermost in their
mind." It is this inherent structure of "trusted hierarchies,"
Shupe explains, that offers ample opportunities for abuse.

Spiritual
authorities -- whether rabbis or roshis, priests or pastoral counselors,
ministers or swamis -- all hold a special position in their spiritual
community. Zen Buddhists, for example, bow to their teacher as a sign of
respect. Some Hindu devotees stand as their guru enters the room and wait until
she takes her place at the front of the room, often on a flower-bedecked dais
or elaborate throne-like chair, before settling in for satsang (a spiritual
gathering). Catholics are taught that a priest is "called" by God to
his vocation. One California woman who was abused by a priest owns a missal, a
gift for her First Communion. In it, a section reads: "My child: Someone
has said it is a sign of salvation to have a great love for Priests. Why is
this so? Because the Priest takes the place of our Blessed Lord on earth. . . .
Jesus loved you so much. He wanted to be always near you. He wants to do many
things for you. He does them all through His Priest."

While Catholics are
taught that priests are representatives of Jesus on earth, devotees are often
led to believe that their guru is a god, a perfected being, or Realized Self.
In his 1971 book, Guru, Swami Muktananda declares: "The Guru is an actual
embodiment of the Absolute. Truly speaking, he is himself the Supreme
Being." The word "guru," derived from Sanskrit, means "one
who brings light out of darkness." Generally, the term is translated as
"teacher." Many religious traditions -- including Buddhism, Hinduism,
Judaism, and Islam -- use the teacher-student relationship as a vehicle through
which to impart spiritual knowledge and experience.

Speaking on an
episode of the PBS series Searching for God in America, Islamic scholar Seyyed
Hossein Nasr of George Washington University argued strongly for having a
spiritual teacher. Practices such as meditation, invocation, and concentration
require the guidance of someone who has experience in them, he explained. But
Nasr also cautioned against choosing a teacher too lightly; potential students
need to exercise "a sense of discernment," he said.

Many believe that
Americans sorely lack this quality. Our cultural conditioning encourages a
fiercely independent, anti-authority stance, but the shadow of that
self-sufficient lone ranger is a gullible idealist wearing rose-colored
blinders. Yvonne Rand, a Buddhist teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, says
that this tendency to "give ourselves away" is the source of enormous
difficulty in the American Buddhist community -- so much so that the Dalai
Lama, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of the Tibetan people, is said to be
"particularly worried" and "deeply concerned" about the
issue. He advises students to get close to the teacher, "spy" on him
or her, watching carefully for at least three years to see if the person's
teachings are congruent with how he or she behaves.

This advice can
also apply to seeking a church. While there are numerous variables that go into
finding a good fit, it is often the personality of the pastor or spiritual
teacher that attracts parishioners and disciples. One personality trait to be
wary of, experts warn, is charisma. Writing in his latest book, Feet of Clay:
Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus, British psychiatrist Anthony
Storr compares the original Greek meaning of "charisma" -- "gift
of grace" -- with sociologist Max Webber's use of the term as "a
special magical quality of personality by virtue of which the individual
possessing it was set apart from ordinary men and women and treated as if endowed
with supernatural or superhuman powers." In the former, the pastor's power
is derived from a spiritual source; in the latter, his power comes solely from
the force of his personality.

Charisma can be
evident in the popular pastor whose dynamic sermons and impeccable people
skills fill the pews and church coffers every week as well as in the guru whose
mere presence induces altered states of consciousness. The problem comes,
however, in mistaking a spiritual leader's persona and talents for holiness. This
dilemma has been particularly troublesome in some Buddhist groups and Hindu
yoga communities where religious practices -- meditation, yoga exercises,
extended periods of prayer, chanting, and even silence -- can induce
trance-like states of consciousness in which participants are highly
suggestible and thus vulnerable. Furthermore, because of Westerners'
inexperience with the mystical side of religion, they often become overly
impressed by siddhis (psychic powers) and equate them with sainthood.

Biofeedback
researcher and pioneer Elmer Green, formerly of the Menninger Foundation, part
of the well-known midwestern psychiatric research and treatment center, has
been involved for decades in investigating the mind's ability to control bodily
functions, emotions, and consciousness. He has conducted many experiments on
psychically gifted individuals, Indian yogis, and a Native American medicine
woman. In his estimation, paranormal abilities have nothing to do with
spiritual development. For example, in the early 1970s Green conducted
experiments on Swami Rama of the Himalayan Institute. Green found that the
Indian swami was able to produce, among other things, an atrial flutter at will
(a condition in which the heart rate flutters at four or five times its natural
rate but doesn't pump blood), create a difference in temperature between the
left and right sides of the palm of his hand, go into a sleep brain pattern
while staying conscious and able to report what was being said in the room, and
give indications of psychokinetic abilities. The swami's abilities, however,
seem to have been matched by the size of his ego. In fact, Green recalls Swami
Rama saying, "The greatest problem a person can have is ego. And nobody
knows that better than I." Says the professionally active, 78-year-old
Green: "There's a Hindu adage: `Go through the garden, but do not eat the
fruit.' Swami Rama enjoyed the fruit."

Some of that
forbidden fruit was sex with female devotees. According to a 1987 dissertation,
a 1990 Yoga Journal article, and court documents related to two lawsuits filed
against him, Swami Rama apparently chose to sexually exploit a continuous
stream of female followers beginning almost as soon as he arrived in the United
States.

Accusations of
Swami Rama's sexual liaisons with female followers swirled around his community
for years. In 1974, four Minneapolis yoga students sent a letter to their
teacher, a Swami Rama devotee, accusing the swami of sexual misconduct,
falsification of his background, and financial improprieties. In the summer of
1975, a small group of disaffected students tried to alert disciples to these
issues by setting up a "Truth Booth" at the entrance to Carleton
College, where Swami Rama's organization was running a summer yoga retreat. In
the early 1980s allegations again surfaced, and in 1990 Yoga Journal published
an article that detailed instances of sexual abuse by the swami. Finally, in
July 1994 two civil lawsuits against Swami Rama, the Himalayan Institute, and
one current and two former institute officials were filed. Testimony given in
sworn depositions taken last year indicates that one of the defendants, Rudolph
Ballentine, M.D. -- a member of the institute's board of directors in the 1970s
and institute president from 1987 to 1993 -- received verbal reports and
letters referring to instances of sexual relations and sexual harassment
between the swami and female disciples, including his personal assistants, for
years. In case after case, Ballentine discounted the allegations on the basis of
the swami's denials and Ballentine's own judgments about the character and
motivations of those reporting the abuse.

Since the suit --
which is still pending -- was filed, Swami Rama has left the country and has
not returned. Says one former devotee: "I think he intentionally
misrepresented himself. He played the game very, very carefully." Sadly
she concludes, "Instead of being a real guru, which is the light that
dispels darkness, he was a maya [illusion] maker."

It may be
tempting to point a finger at a particular group of perpetrators and say,
"It's all their fault. If we could only round them up, maybe even jail
them, we could eradicate abuse." In reality, this is neither a wise nor a
feasible course of action. The reason abuse has persisted for so long and cuts
across denominational lines is because the dynamics underlying it are universal
-- varying only in the degree to which we are aware of them and in our ability
to deal with them.

One of these
dynamics is transference. The concept, which originated with Freud, refers to
the process by which we transfer past feelings onto individuals in the present
for the purpose of reliving and resolving painful experiences. Transference
does not allow you to see the person as he or she is; rather, you see that
individual through a screen of projections.

Father Stephen
Rossetti explains that authority figures such as clergy are often figures of
transference, and as a Catholic priest he experiences it every day. Simply
walking down the street, "half the people love and a few people hate me,
and they don't even know me," he says. "They don't know Steve
Rossetti."

Virginia Wink
Hilton, a Costa Mesa, California, psychotherapist, agrees. In her opinion, a
person who idealizes the minister, priest, or spiritual teacher or who has
erotic feelings for him is not really seeing the clergyperson. The feelings are
not for the minister but come out of unconscious material. If a clergyperson
doesn't understand this, Hilton says, "it puts him in enormous jeopardy."

Hilton compares
the transference that psychotherapists experience to that which a minister
might encounter in his parish. Transference in a therapy setting is fairly
clear and well-defined, she says: Psychotherapists meet with clients an hour a
week, at the same time, in the same location. Ministers and priests, on the
other hand, are "weaving in and out of the lives of parishioners all the
time." The situation becomes complicated because of the play of both
parties' unconscious dynamics and unmet needs roiling below the surface of
their social personas.

For example,
people may desperately crave a relationship with someone who is smarter,
kinder, more spiritual, and more compassionate than they feel they are because
they believe that association will quell their anxieties and afford them a
measure of security in a seemingly unpredictable and dangerous world. They want
heroes and saints to inspire, soothe, love them. Says one experienced spiritual
seeker: "I've worked with enough New Age heroes in enough groups to know
they aren't heroes; they aren't saints. But people don't want to see that.
People want a hero. They want somebody who is a thousand times better than they
are. They want a Pope."

In this way,
disciples and parishioners can transform spiritual authorities into omniscient
experts, the expectations of whom far exceed the leader's knowledge or
experience. The basic function of a religious authority is spiritual direction,
assisting individuals in forging a relationship with the Divine. But often
there are pressures for them to do and be more. Yvonne Rand explains that
students of Buddhism might go to their Zen teacher and ask him about their
marriage, how to raise their children, what to do about their jobs.
"Pretty soon the teacher starts to think, `Oh, I really know a lot about
everything.' Pretty soon the student starts projecting all-knowingness on the
teacher, and the relationship gets way out of balance."

This human
propensity to desire a savior, an unconditionally loving parent, a hero, or a
saint can devolve into a dark pursuit with painful consequences. For example,
if yoga devotees believe that the guru knows best, they may gradually allow the
guru to guide not only their spiritual process but every aspect of their lives.
This unbounded devotion can feed the guru's sense of power and can fuel a sense
of grandiosity or invincibility. The guru may begin to sound like the Pope
delivering opinions ex cathedra. He may also begin to feel that rules that
apply to others don't apply to him. As Anthony Storr writes, "It is
intoxicating to be adored, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the guru
not to concur with the beliefs of his disciples." Furthermore, Storr
reasons, "if a man comes to believe that he has special insights, and that
he has been selected by God to pass on these insights to others, he is likely
to conclude that he has special privileges." Often those privileges are
sexual.

Some female
parishioners and devotees all too willingly cooperate because they have turned
the priest, minister, or guru into an object of adoration, flirtation, and
sexual desire. One meditation teacher says that women approached him even in
the middle of the night on retreat. Another male ashramite recalls one young
woman who later accused her spiritual teacher of sexual misconduct: "She
was a sexy young thing, for sure. I remember sitting in the room and thinking
that. But she wasn't giving me any attention." Her attention was riveted
on the guru.

Despite these
sexual come-ons, Peter Rutter, a Jungian-oriented San Francisco psychiatrist,
argues that it is up to the spiritual leader to maintain the proper sexual
boundaries. The task is difficult, admits Rutter, who has written two books on
the subject of boundary violations, but he suggests that the ultimate protection
against abuse is the leader's understanding of the harm he can inflict and his
empathy with the woman.

Not all spiritual
authorities have that capacity. Sometimes what psychologists call a personality
disorder compels a person to exploit, manipulate, and hurt those in their
spiritual care. While publicly charming, ebullient, devoted, hard-working, and
inspiring, this leader proves himself cunning, slick, seductive, and cruel in
private. Involved in multiple, simultaneous relationships, he can sweet-talk his
victims into compliance -- "Our love is special and holy" -- or bully
them into submission. United Church of Christ minister Marie Fortune, in her
book Is Nothing Sacred?, details the havoc and pain wreaked on individual women
and the congregation by the sexual misconduct of one of the church's pastors.
Fortune notes that sexual predators go to great lengths to choose women whose
current circumstances might make them vulnerable: for instance, the death of a
parent, a divorce, problems with children, or an illness. The situation that
sends Fortune "over the edge" is one in which a congregant approaches
a minister for help in dealing with childhood sexual abuse. Often that
confidence is seen by the minister as a "green light" to seduce the
person. One clergyman whom Fortune heard about told his victim that the way to
heal from childhood sexual abuse was to re-enact the experiences with him.
"I am amazed at the creativity that perpetrators have," Fortune says,
"the manipulation of theology and scripture and ritual, the moral
rationalization they bring to bear: `No, there is nothing wrong with this
because God's love for you is flowing through me, and this is a holy
kiss.'"

Because of the
innocence and vulnerability of the victims, perhaps the most heinous crime
perpetrated by sexual predators is the abuse of children. Trust, innocence, and
sense of self all shatter, leaving behind shards of fear, shame, distrust, and
self-loathing.

David Clohessy of
SNAP, himself a survivor of abuse by a priest, describes the abrupt shift in
perception this way: "It's like getting up one morning, walking outside,
and all of a sudden the law of gravity isn't in effect anymore. It is something
that is so far beyond the pale of expectation for a kid. . . . It is just a
horrible, horrible betrayal."

Of course, the
degree of damage to individual youngsters varies. For example, the closer the
relationship of the offender to the child, the greater the trauma. The type of
abuse (fondling versus intercourse, for example), its duration, the degree of
violence, and the age of the child also figure prominently in the extent of the
pain and damage inflicted. Young sexual-abuse victims inevitably suffer from
what professionals call posttraumatic stress disorder, symptoms of which, says
Judith Lewis Herman in her classic book Trauma and Recovery, are "both
extensive and enduring." These include an extreme startle response,
elevated arousal, sleep disturbances, deep distrust, sexualized behaviors,
depression, withdrawal, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicidal
thoughts and actions. In fact, a survey described in the paper "In the
Name of God: A Profile of Religion-Related Child Abuse" in the Journal of
Social Issues (volume 51, number 2) reported that, of their sample, almost 20
percent of children abused by religious authorities subsequently considered
suicide.

Not only is the
pain inflicted on an individual child heartbreaking, but the scope of the
problem is immense because each perpetrator generally has multiple victims. In
Slayer of the Soul, an anthology whose articles focus on issues related to the
Catholic Church and child sexual abuse, Father Stephen Rossetti cites a 1987
study that found that 377 child molesters whose relations with victims were not
incestuous had victimized 4,435 girls and 22,981 boys. Pentecostal preacher
Tony Leyva, for example, pleaded guilty to having abused upwards of 100 boys,
although law-enforcement officials placed the number closer to 800.

Although
youngsters who have been molested by clergy exhibit the same symptomatology as
those violated by other trusted adults, there is an added dimension if the
abuse is perpetrated by a spiritual authority. Developmentally, children often
equate spiritual authorities with God. For this reason it's easy to see how a
child might think sexual fondling is somehow supernaturally sanctioned. One
case cited in the Journal of Social Issues article involved a priest and his
wife who told the boys they abused that the abuse was part of the youngsters'
religious obligation as "good Christians." The same researchers also
noted that the opposite attribution can be made: One young girl who was
sexually abused by both parents was placed with a minister who molested her as
well, saying that the abuse was "God's punishment" for her
"badness."

Because church is
often thought of as a refuge, and God as someone to turn to in troubled times,
a child who is molested may turn away altogether from spiritual pursuits even
into adulthood. He or she may not attend church, pray, or otherwise participate
in religious rituals. David Clohessy, for instance, says he no longer considers
himself a Catholic. "In fairness, I want to say that I could be in this
same spiritual position even if I never had been abused." Still, he says, "there
are times when I am very envious of those people who have been able to separate
out what one man with a Roman collar did to them as kids from the rest of the
institution and the rest of religion. I am envious of people who still have
their faith."

Outrage and anger
are understandable, natural, human responses to sexual abuse of minors by
clergy; the force of those feelings is needed to protect children. However,
what often gets lost in the hue and cry resulting from news of such abuse is an
understanding of the central character in the drama: the perpetrator.

Father Rossetti
of St. Luke Institute takes a compassionate yet clear-eyed view of clergy child
abusers. The institute, a 32-bed psychiatric hospital in the Maryland suburbs
outside Washington, D.C., provides care primarily for Catholic priests with
addictive disorders and psychological problems such as chronic depression. St.
Luke also deals with sex offenders on a regular basis. While Rossetti does not
condone their offenses, he does see their behavior as reflective of larger
societal problems. He uses family-therapy and systems theories to explain how
these offenders might be the "identified patients" of a dysfunctional
societal "family."

"Child
molesters don't drop down from Mars," he says. "They come from a
society that produces that pathology. So if we want to get rid of this problem,
we have to heal society."

Specifically what
need to be healed, he says, are our flawed attitudes toward human sexuality and
aggression. On the one hand, he explains in Slayer of the Soul, we as a culture
are obsessed by sex; on the other hand, religious traditions, in not-so-subtle
ways, condemn sexuality as unspiritual and even sinful. Pointing to increasing
violence, he states that we know neither how to encourage healthy human
aggression nor how to manage violence. We need to learn to become strong, he
says, without being overly controlling or power-hungry, assertive rather than
aggressive. We need to become fully sexual people who are warm, compassionate,
intimate, engaged, and empathic.

As for the
molesters, Rossetti is surprised by the intensity of hatred toward them. He
says he has heard people suggest castrating them, tattooing them on the
forehead, even killing them. "You hear this said all the time by rather
rational people. There is a well of hatred toward child molesters that goes
beyond the heinousness of the crime." Furthermore, he notes, attention
seems fixated on child abuse in the Catholic Church.

Another skewed
public perception is that sociopathic predators are the sole perpetrators of
sexual abuse. As clinicians who deal with sexual boundary violations have
discovered, the profiles of perpetrators fall along a continuum. Many different
personality types can violate boundaries, and ignoring this fact can jeopardize
parishioners and devotees alike.

Psychologist John
C. Gonsiorek has described the characteristics of clergy perpetrators (see box,
"Who Abuses?"), as have Richard Irons, M.D., and Episcopal priest
Katherine Roberts, distinguishing among them differences in age, experience,
career development, clinical diagnosis, and prognosis. Their work in this area
is important in terms of humanizing the perpetrators as well as communicating
the message that factors such as stress, training and education, self-awareness,
and peer relationships are significant elements in both the cause and
prevention of clergy sexual misconduct.

Says David
Clohessy: "The most notorious priest molester [of children] in history is
James Porter of Massachusetts. He was clearly a predator; he abused anything
with a pulse. But even though his behavior is predatory, I think that if you
got inside his head and heart, you would find the same loneliness and
woundedness that is more obvious in other priests who molest."

One of the most overlooked
players in instances of abuse by spiritual authorities is the community. A good
example of how a collective both contributes to and suffers from abuses by a
spiritual authority is the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox,
Massachusetts, which is struggling to regain the vitality it lost two years ago
when its founder, Yogi Amrit Desai, resigned his post as spiritual director
after admitting to inappropriate sexual contact with several women.

Nestled in the
Berkshires amid a host of cultural, arts, and outdoor attractions, Kripalu's
combination of holistic programs and spa-like offerings such as vegetarian
fare, saunas, whirlpools, and a private lakefront beach make it a desirable
R-and-R destination for holistically minded individuals. Its peaceful location
belies the major upheaval it endured, losing two-thirds of its residents,
running monthly deficits of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and reorganizing
its management structure. The turmoil the center encountered clearly did not
begin with Amrit Desai's resignation. With a core of 100 longtime residents --
some having been there for 10 years or more -- the community had been immersed
in an individuation process in which midlife devotees were struggling to
articulate and make conscious their growing discomfort with a system that on
the one hand provided them with spiritual sustenance and a sense of belonging
and purpose and on the other hand paid scant attention to the classic shadow
bugbears of sex, power, and money.

The first Kripalu
ashram, established by Amrit Desai in Sumneytown, Pennsylvania, in the early
1970s, was a small residential community that viewed itself as a religious
order. With a skeletal core staff and affiliated members who worked in the town
nearby, the ashram had an annual budget of less than $100,000. Spiritual
practice was the community's raison d'etre, and members participated in a
stringent yoga regimen -- wake-up at 4 a.m., with jogging, yoga, pranayama
breathing exercises, and satsang (teaching session) all before breakfast.
Brahmacharya -- a yoga principle akin to chastity or sexual modesty -- was
strongly encouraged. In yoga the life force is seen as residing in sexual
energy and sexual fluids. Yoga practice is aimed at raising that energy up the
spine toward higher spiritual centers. Therefore, sexual activities --
masturbating or intercourse -- are seen as counterproductive to one's spiritual
progress.

By all accounts,
Amrit Desai was a gentle yet powerfully inspirational teacher. The pivotal
moment in his own life had come during a morning yoga practice session in 1970
when, as he has described it, he was "flooded with bliss" and began
spontaneously performing --- or being performed by -- yoga exercises with a
newfound flexibility and fluidity. Not only was he drawn into an ecstatic state
but those in the room with him -- his wife and two students -- were also drawn
into a deep state of meditation. Inspired by this experience, Desai began to
formulate a new method of "meditation in motion," which he called
Kripalu Yoga in honor of his guru.

In the early
years of the Kripalu ashram, it was not uncommon for residents to have strong
shakti (energy) experiences, such as automatic movement and writing, speaking
in tongues, and sharp increases in body temperature. These experiences in part
solidified Desai's guru status among many of his students; some disciples took
them to mean that the guru must be bona fide and therefore infallible. For too
many devotees this reasoning translated as giving over their sense of judgment
in major life decisions. One area that was affected was sexual activity. In a
milieu in which "single and celibate" was the norm, many disciples
did not marry or have children.

What community
residents did not know was that, as they earnestly practiced brahmacharya,
their guru was violating this yogic principle through sexual contact with
female disciples. In 1986 a devotee made it known that she had had a sexual
relationship years before with him. But when confronted in a community-wide
meeting, Desai flatly denied the accusation. The upshot was that the community
-- including her husband and son -- believed the guru. The woman left the
ashram, staying in the area to be near her child. Eight years later, she was
vindicated when another woman came forward and described to community members
how Desai had used her sexually when she was his personal assistant in the
1970s. What devastated many of Desai's followers far more than the revelations
of his inappropriate sexual relations was the fact that he had hidden them and
lied about them for so long.

"I never
would have said Kripalu was a cult," says Jean Matlack, a Washington,
D.C., psychotherapist and a Kripalu Yoga teacher, "but now I understand
that for people who lived there and were young and vulnerable, they were in a
kind of trance. They gave over their lives in a way that is the hallmark of
cults."

Another area
where residents "woke up" was the financial one. Over the years the
community grew both in numbers and in sophistication. In 1983, it invested
$1.25 million to purchase a former Jesuit seminary in Lenox. Situated on
several hundred acres, the ashram grew to 300 residents and became a thriving
retreat and holistic health center. In the late 1980s Kripalu residents,
especially the old-timers, began feeling their oats. Desai was traveling a
great deal, and the staff found themselves teaching the courses, handling
administrative duties, putting out advertising -- in other words, running the
center. With the flush of financial success and the sense of real-world
achievement, many felt a need to "graduate" and to reap the monetary
rewards of what was now a multimillion-dollar-a-year enterprise. From the
start, Kripalu was a religious order legally modeled on a Catholic monastery or
convent. "Vowed" members initially received no salary. If someone
needed a pair of jeans or shoes, he or she would have to request them. Later,
members began to receive a stipend of $30 a month, out of which they had to pay
for personal items such as shampoo. Than money was not technically a salary and
did not qualify them for Social Security benefits. On the other hand, Amrit
Desai, who at the founding of Kripalu had a wife and children, received
financial compensation from the beginning. At the time of his resignation, he was
being paid $155,000 annually, plus an additional $15,000 to $33,000 a year in
royalties from the sale of his books and tapes. Although the words
"financial exploitation" never crossed the lips of any Kripalu
associates, the discrepancy between the remuneration of residents and the guru
was obvious. When the community's cup began to run over, residents stood in
line to share the bounty. "Appropriate" remuneration based on length
of service was instituted. But even top-level stipends were no more than $3,400
a year. A resident security fund -- a kind of retirement plan that set aside
monies to provide for lifetime residents in their old age. The vesting period
was exceptionally long -- 16 years. But in the meantime, certain amenities --
such as a new building with living quarters for longtime members and easy
access to automobiles -- made life more comfortable. One sticking point that
remained unresolved, however, was the fact that some managers had been hired to
work at Kripalu and drew salaries that seemed fairly competitive with
professional positions in the outside world, while other vowed members, even
though they may have been working for the community longer, received only the
"appropriate" stipends. Many of the residents -- whether they have
left or are staying in some relationship with Kripalu -- are now involved in a
claims process that will work out a financial settlement between the center and
longtime residents.

In an interview
conducted in May 1994, Amrit Desai told Yoga Journal senior writer Ann Cushman
that "we are in the process of dismantling the old form, which has served
its purpose. We are now exploring new depths of the guru-disciple
relationship." It's hard to believe that, as he spoke these words, he
could have anticipated the chaos and disillusionment that would be precipitated
five short months later when revelations of his sexual contact with female
devotees would come to light.

Kripalu's general
counsel, Daniel Bowling, is convinced that Desai's secret misdeeds did not
explode into a conflict, but the conflict was there calling for integration;
whatever was keeping the secret in place and unintegrated had to be exploded.
Dinabandhu (Patton Sarley), past president of Kripalu and now executive
director of the Omega Institute of Holistic Studies, states this same idea
slightly differently: "Clearly, individuation needed to happen for all of
us. You can't fool Mother Nature. Either you do it gracefully, which we
attempted to do, or you do it ungracefully -- but you are going to do it."

Kripalu did it.
For months, even while guest programs continued, intense catharsis was carried
on in private behind closed doors, in community meetings, and in special
workshops conducted by outside leaders such as spiritual teacher and author Ram
Dass; Arnie Mindell, known for process-oriented psychology and his
conflict-resolution work; and Elizabeth Stellas-Tippins of the Center for the
Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence. According to Daniel Bowling, it is
difficult to "put words around the impact," referring to the
windstorm of emotions -- anger, frustration, disbelief, disenchantment, grief
-- that were unleashed. There were a rash of marriages, births, and many, many
leave-takings.

Still, the
community seems to have weathered the storm. A new executive director, with
both corporate management experience and a personal understanding of the
spiritual journey, has been hired; the quality of programs remains high; the
claims process is nearly complete; and a new organizational structure has been created:
Whereas the Kripalu staff once consisted primarily of vowed members and 15
salaried employees, today 160 staff members are paid, and only 26 remain vowed.
The managers are also working hard on a strategic direction for the center.

According to Daniel
Bowling, what Kripalu has accomplished over the past two years "is not
just Hatha Yoga on the yoga mat. We have done it under the most difficult of
circumstances one can imagine, to bring about a healing in this three-way
dynamic between individuals, teacher, and community." While the problem of
abuse by spiritual authorities threatens to overwhelm with its universality,
prevalence, and magnitude of spiritual and emotional devastation, there are
indications that with vigilance, systems interventions, and support for
victims, perpetrators, and their religious communities, the tiger can be tamed.

At the
organizational level, codes of ethics are being written clearly stating that
sexual contact by a priest, pastor, guru, or roshi with a member of his or her
flock is a breach of professional boundaries, that responsibility for
maintaining appropriate boundaries lies with the spiritual leader, and that
violations of such boundaries are both unethical and unacceptable. Policies and
procedures for handling situations -- ranging from verbal accusations to
formal, written complaints -- are also being put into place. Experience has
shown that without them, the process of investigating allegations gets muddled
in ways that can retraumatize the victim and upset the community. At present, a
variety of institutions, from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship to the General
Conference of the Seventh Day Adventists, have implemented such codes,
policies, and procedures on sexual abuse and/or harassment. But according to
American Baptist minister Pat Liberty, "policies and procedures don't
solve the problems"; what does is "shifting basic paradigms about
ministry." One way to accomplish this is through education and training.
Courses on sexuality, ethics, professional boundaries, and transference can
help young men and women get a more realistic view of interpersonal problems
and dynamics that go along with the ministerial territory.

Buddhist teacher
Yvonne Rand also thinks that spiritual seekers need to be educated in how to
find a teacher and what to look for if they think they may be getting into
trouble. Asian teachers coming to the United States to lead Buddhist and Hindu
spiritual communities are to some extent culture-bound to patriarchal systems.
Rand believes that the best hope for diminishing sexual abuse in the American
Buddhist communities is to educate students by speaking out, writing articles,
and holding workshops on the topic.

In addition to
self-help and support groups for victims, an often effective avenue for healing
is litigation or mediation. Many people in both the therapy and ministry
professions believe that if victims feel that their wounds are acknowledged and
that some restitution -- for example, payment for therapy sessions -- is made,
litigation may be unnecessary. Marie Fortune maintains that victims generally
have reasonable requests: an apology, acknowledgment from the perpetrator, a
letter to the congregation that indicates what final steps have been taken
around the complaint. But when institutions stonewall victims, many feel that
they have no other option than to bring a lawsuit. Of course, litigation is
what brought the issue of clergy sexual misconduct into public awareness.
Lawsuits against the Catholic Church alerted the media to the problem and resulted
in large settlements for victims. Through this economic leverage, victims
forced changes in institutional responses. However, Kripalu's Daniel Bowling
doesn't think healing and spiritual values are upheld by bringing in lawyers to
rectify the power imbalance in this setting. In fact, he says, you can destroy
everything in that process. Kripalu and its longtime residents are using
mediation to resolve financial claims against the center.

Another area that
can help guard against abuses is pastoral self-care. According to Liberty, the
issue of workaholism is critical. "Basically, the lines between clergy
personal life and clergy professional life are pretty thin. Historically, the
Church is a place that has rewarded workaholism and called it devotion."
She adds that for clergy and their parishioners to think that the former are on
call 24 hours, seven days a week, is "nonsense."

Ministers need to
have a life beyond their professional calling, experts say, a place to relax
and renew themselves. One essential part of that life in order to stave off
temptations to violate sexual boundaries is same-sex friendships. Jungian
analyst and author Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig is convinced that they are the single
best antidote to ego inflation and self-deception. Friends point out our
virtues as well as our ridiculous sides. Setting oneself up as a guru can
preclude simple peer relations, and without solid friendships one begins to
minister in a vacuum. Colleagues and friends keep us connected, honest, and in
touch with reality.

Last, Fortune
cautions that people who have come out of destructive family relationships
often seek a haven, a safe and intimate family unit, like a spiritual
community. Unfortunately, these desires might create unrealistic expectations
of intimacy and an enmeshed system that is inappropriate to a faith community.
Although people often refer to their spiritual community as a family, Fortune
thinks they should look for a different metaphor and model. "Which doesn't
mean that significant things won't happen," she says, but it all comes
down to a sense of balance. "There are some things I do with my family and
close friends. Other things I do with coworkers. There are still other things I
do with my church. Occasionally there are situations where they blend, but I
don't expect any one of those pieces of my life to meet all my needs."

Still, Liberty is
convinced that "we have only seen the tip of the iceberg" with regard
to abusive power by spiritual authorities; hundreds, maybe thousands, of men
and women who have been wounded have not yet come forward to tell their
stories. And, she adds, instances of abuse in which perpetrators are not being
held appropriately accountable are still occurring. Far too many religious
institutions are, she says, turning "a blind eye and a deaf ear to the
reality of abuse."

The breadth of
the problem and the depth of the suffering seem to require a constant vigilance
from communities, spiritual seekers, and spiritual leaders alike because the
problem is part and parcel of the spiritual search. As Carl Jung cautioned, we
need to be aware that as we grow toward enlightenment, so too does our shadow
grow. Thus, simple remedies consistently applied -- balance in one's life, deep
friendships, a dedication to self-knowledge, integrity, a willingness to stand
up and tell the truth, empathy, and a healthy exercise of inner authority --
all help counteract abusive behavior. For in the end we are all guardians of
the gate. As Yvonne Rand reminds us, the dynamics of abuse are "in everybody's
back yard. In fact, the critical thing to understand is that not only is it in
our back yards, but it is in each one of us."

Anne A.
Simpkinson is editor of Common Boundary magazine. The Common Boundary
Organization is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to exploring the
sources of meaning in human experience. They examine the relationship among
matters of the heart, matters of the mind, and matters of the soul; psychology,
spirituality, and creativity; and individual growth and social change.

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